Legal citations to case opinions are typically found in legal writings. When attorneys write legal briefs and memoranda, when judges write legal opinions, and when law students and law professors write academic papers, the writings typically contain citations to legal sources, such as case opinions, statutes, and administrative regulations. When writing these citations, members of the United States legal profession must follow particular stylistic guidelines. Most are expected to follow the stylistic rules that are promulgated in a handbook called the Bluebook: A Uniform System of Citation (“the Bluebook”).
According to the Bluebook stylistic rules, a typical case citation has the form “United States v. McDonald, 531 F.2d 196, 199–200 (4th Cir. 1976)”. In this citation, “United States v. McDonald” represents the name of the case, “531 F.2d 196” represents volume 531, page 196 of the reporter Federal Reporter, Second Series, “199–200” represents the pinpoint page number to a specific passage, “4th Cir.” represents the court that decided the opinion (the Federal Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals), and “1976” represents the year the opinion was decided. Case names are often underlined or italicized.
The Bluebook's rules are quite specific and complex. When adding a citation to a single court opinion, for example, the writer must adhere to 15 pages of general rules that potentially apply, and must also consult several lengthy tables for rules that are specific to that opinion's jurisdiction. Some of these rules differ depending on the context of the citation. Further, the rules for citations to opinions from one jurisdiction are often inconsistent with similar rules for those of another jurisdiction, so the writer must frequently consult the appropriate table to ensure that he or she is using the appropriate style for that jurisdiction.
Consequently, conscientious legal professionals must devote a considerable amount of time to ensuring that they have properly followed the Bluebook format. Since even the most careful professional, however, will likely make some errors that violate the Bluebook rules, a computer program that locates citations in a word processing document, checks those citations for stylistic accuracy, and suggests and implements corrections can provide a substantial benefit in improving accuracy and saving the user's time.
In addition, a computer program that locates citations in a document and parses their constituent components has other applications. For example, many legal briefs are required to have a “table of authorities,” an index of each citation contained in a brief. Presently, word processing applications like Microsoft Word® have components that generate tables of authorities; however, these components require the user to mark each citation manually in the word processing document. A program that automatically locates and marks each citation in a document, such as the invention described herein, would help to improve the speed and accuracy of building tables of authorities.